Nat’l Research Organization Credits ECHO for Effective Model to Reach non-English Speaking Pops.

July 21, 2010 - PRLog -- Learnings from past emergencies such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have demonstrated that current emergency preparedness plans often fail at addressing the needs of diverse populations, specifically non-English speaking ones, according to the RAND Public Health Initiative.

To address this, RAND recently released a toolkit that is meant to help state agencies, local health agencies, community-based and/or non-governmental organizations improve their current emergency preparedness plans and activities by reviewing case studies and picking out some organizations as examples.

Emergency, Community, and Health Outreach (ECHO) was chosen as an example organization and received special recognition in this toolkit for the unique resources and services that ECHO provides limited English proficiency populations. ECHO’s communications tools include television, radio, web, public service announcements, e-alerts, and more.

“One of ECHO's critical successes has been in forging a positive response among a diverse population. It has done this by customizing each topic for each language and featuring native-speaking on-air personalities and expert guests.” (RAND Public Health Initiative, 2010, p. 58).

ECHO is also recognized in Chapters 4, 5, and 7 for its efforts to coordinate public health and emergency response communications with local and state government and nonprofits utilizing a community partner program where information can be shared and distributed to communities in need. To view the toolkit in PDF, follow this link: http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR68....

“We are proud to be included in RAND’s report and our hope is to continue improving our routine and emergency response communications helping underserved populations integrate into communities. It’s so exciting to see national organizations recognize what we’re doing and try to learn from our experiences,” said Lillian McDonald, Executive Director of ECHO.

About the RAND Corporation
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. RAND focuses on the issues that matter most such as health, education, national security, international affairs, law and business, the environment, and more. With a research staff consisting of some of the world's preeminent minds, RAND has been expanding the boundaries of human knowledge for more than 60 years.

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Formed in 2004, the mission of ECHO is to leverage partnerships to deliver vital health, safety, emergency and civic engagement information to help the ever-changing, diverse population integrate and become successful in our communities.